Heads on Concrete, Bi’s in the Closet, and Playing Around

Even after 30 years together, sometimes my bride Management and I have misunderstandings. Just last week we had one. She had a day off and was working on one of her other jobs at home. About midmorning she called me and said, “Come home and play.” Well, what could I do?  I dropped what I was doing and within seconds was heading home.

The stories in this column are true. Averett lives a dull life in rural Southside Virginia with his wife Management, two children and a rotating assortment of goats, dogs, cats, snakes and other local fauna.

My truck was parked in the wrong directions so I cut a circle around the Messenger building. As the Uneasy Rider song says, “I was throwing a ton of dust in the air.” Within minutes I did a power slide into my parking place at home.

Sure enough there was Management waiting for me. The problem was she was waiting for me in the little sailboat out on the pond. I guess after thirty years “come play with me” can have different meanings. In any case, we had a nice time, but if I’d known “playing” meant sailing I might have driven slower.

We had a little excitement last week. The middle Grand-brat took a pretty severe fall. He fell off a porch and landed on the concrete on his head, or is that on his head on the concrete. I wasn’t really worried though. He has my genes and so far no Jones has ever been seriously injured by a blow to the head.

Still I dropped everything and made a racing trip to the hospital.

The daughter took him to the hospital. They were very concerned. They were concerned if he had been immunized, they were concerned if anyone in their house was a smoker, they were concerned if he had been circumcised. They were concerned about lots of things. They finally checked out his head and sent him home. I am concerned the potential head injury wasn’t their biggest concern. After all they didn’t know about his Jones genes and this could have been serious for a normal kid.

As I’ve mentioned before there was an article in the Chattanooga Free Press around 1935 about a Jones child who fell something like 65 feet from a tree and wasn’t injured. That kid was my father. (He probably landed on his head.) The reason they knew the exact distance was that he promptly re-climbed the tree with a string and measured it.

Last night I took a little fall and since I didn’t land on my head I’m a little sore. A friend found me some bi-fold doors for the basement closets at a yard sale. I’m a little concerned about this. Does this mean there are some Bi’s folded in my closets just waiting to come out?

It was a great deal. Just a few bucks for each set and they were even painted the correct color for each room. I had them stacked against the wall and when I went to move one set the others slid down and swept me off of my feet. There I was in a pile of doors but I didn’t damage them at all and I only damaged me a little bit.

I had a good time voting yesterday. Voting is important and I take it seriously. In fact I take it so seriously I would vote several times if I could. On my way to vote I stopped for coffee. While drinking coffee, a friend of mine came in wearing his “I voted” sticker. I decided it would be fun to wear his sticker when I voted.

By the time I’d finished voting I was wearing four “I voted” stickers and no one noticed except one guy as I was leaving.

I told him, I am an Independent and I say “vote early and vote often.” Now I’m waiting to see if some guys in suits show up to ask me a bunch of questions.